Race and European Soccer

Is Racism Ruining Soccer?

And so black players have penetrated European national soccer teams in large numbers. That fact has long irritated a particular population of French fans. France's National Consultative Commission on Human Rights publishes an annual survey on racist attitudes. In 1999, a new question was inserted into the survey: Were there "too many players of foreign origin in the French soccer team?" You would not have imagined anyone thought so. The players of foreign origin have made France world champions. Yet in 1999, 31% of respondents either totally or mostly agreed with this statement, while in 2000, 36% agreed. More than a third of French people did not want this team even when it was the best on earth. After last year’s French debacle at the World Cup, complete with the brief players’ strike, imagine the public feelings about their multiracial team now.

What explains racism in French soccer?

Popular racism is a powerful political force in Europe, and yet only in France has it seemed to have such impact on soccer fans. The Netherlands also has a large anti-immigrant party. In last year’s elections, it garnered 16% of the vote. However, this party attacks Muslims rather than the black Christians who tend to populate Holland’s national soccer team. British racism focuses more against Muslims and new immigrants than against working-class black people of Caribbean origin, a handful of whom play for England.

But the French racist Front National, which may well finish second in next year’s elections, voices popular unhappiness about blacks and especially Muslims, the two largest constituents of the French national team. Now that sentiment seems to have taken hold even inside the French Football Federation.

Job discrimination against black players

Yet the federation’s secret talks in Paris last November were something new. What they envisaged was job discrimination against black players — something almost unheard of in soccer in recent decades. Whereas ordinary Arabs and blacks in France, say, struggled to find jobs, Arab and black soccer players in France did not. Nobody — we had thought, before the minutes of that Paris meeting leaked — was barred from top-class soccer anymore because of skin color.

When Stefan Szymanski and I looked for wage discrimination against black players in English soccer for our recent book Soccernomics, we found that it had existed before about 1990 but disappeared thereafter as black players proved beyond doubt that they were as good as whites. The market in soccer players has been ruthlessly fair, largely because they perform their trade in public, before millions of witnesses. Everyone can see quickly whether you are good or not. Other professions are less transparent, and so discrimination can continue to exist. Racism is a cost that no top team can afford — a fact that makes that Paris meeting even more astounding.

Almost every player in international soccer is there because he deserves to be, not because of his skin color. Long may it last.